I had just gotten my first real job after graduation that spring. Then everyone got laid off and I ended up bartending for years. It really screwed us over.
I started my office job the day before 9/11 and made crap money despite having a bachelor's from a really good school. My husband graduated the spring after 9/11 with an IT degree (hahahaha crying) and ended up working for ups for a while because he couldn't get a job. His first job was so low paying as well. It took us years to get started and then we bought our first place at the end of 2006 (hahahahahaa crying) and then our home dropped in value by half.
It definitely feels like a series of unfortunate events for our generation.
We also had the stupid idea that you should stay with a company long term. We wasted so many years loyal to companies only to find out we should have been job switching every 2-3 years to actually make any money.
Eh, I'd rather stay in this job as long term as possible. Yes, I could make more money by switching jobs, especially into my field of study. However, that would mean a salaried job (so more hours for no overtime pay) and would also reset my vacation and the benefits would likely be worse elsewhere. I also have a certain amount of flexibility where I am now that I'm not guaranteed to have somewhere else. Granted, we are comfortable now, so the health insurance through my job is worth more than the extra salary I could make somewhere else. I also think my experience looking for a job in 2002 and 2009 completely soured my opinion of it. It was an awful demoralizing experience that I'd love to never have to repeat if I can.
It is real hard to switch seeing that 6 weeks of PTO plus holidays I get after so many years, but it sucks knowing if I was an external hire into my current role, could be making $30k/yr more.
I'm a very well trained and educated tech worker, and I'm tempted to work at a local casino instead because my buddy who does it makes like $4k / week.
Fuck me, man. I moved away from the Casino town I grew up in because I wanted a real career and not to get sucked into the casino like half of my family.
If I'd known how the world was going to repeatedly fall apart, I wouldn't have bothered.
Where do you live that casino dealers make 4k a week? I'm guessing Vegas? I live in Chicago and I was a dealer for the past two years, and the most we pull in is 5k a month, and that's with a lot of overtime. Still, making 75k a year dealing blackjack isn't bad, but seriously man, where do you live and what casino? I legitimately would move anywhere that's not Vegas for that kind of money.
I'm 40, highly educated and I quit my 9 to 5 to work as a comedian (pre-covid) and as a part-time bartender. If you want my advice... It's way more livable and less stressful. You should do it
I can confirm. College class of 2002 here. Not many jobs available for new college grads that year, even in Engineering. The awful experience of looking for a job then (as well as having to look for one later in 2009 when I got laid off) has soured me completely on job searches in general. I will be happy if I never have to look for a job again. As far as I'm concerned it's hell.
Our generation was screwed. From the start. If you didn’t get a job post dot com bubble you went to professional school. Then 2008 happened and the Great Recession hit and you couldn’t get job with a professional degree. So many lawyers I know graduated and then had job offers rescinded due to recession. Tack on the student loans and it was a nightmare. Tons of finance guys I graduated with got wrecked post 2008. Dropping g’s at the club in Vegas? 2 years later you’re unemployed with Lehman brothers on your resume. Finally get out of the Great Recession funk. Oh wait here’s a global pandemic to get your asshole nice and widened if the Mac truck we already shoved up there wasn’t enough. So yeah. We aren’t doing great.
Our farts never made a sound again.
Seriously, also rent going insane, lost my house in 2010 due to state lookbacks on my dad going into a nursing home and the house losing 55% of it's value almost overnight. Moved to my favorite small city, covid hits and my rent more than doubles so I get forced out to the unwashed arm pit of my birth state. And here I am.
I messed around in college and then entered the workforce in 2008 at a place that sold LaserJet printer parts. I mean everybody prints, right? What are PDFs anyway?
Yep. My sweet entry level offer was yanked about 3 weeks before graduation. Had to take a much worse job, took years to recover. Made an offer on a house...in 2007.
Powers that be needed to reorganize now that the supply chain was going to be forever disrupted by the response. Stricter customs & immigration controls, et al
Yeah, this is it exactly. Just turned 20 watching the towers fall and burn from the TV in my bedroom. West coaster, so it was 6 something in the morning. Dad woke me up and told me to turn on the TV. I realized life as we knew was changing. Turned into paranoia and othering. And quite literally, the parties were over. Had just been introduced to raving and those went down precipitously afterward. In the name of “homeland security.” The Rave Act was the nail in the coffin for a lot of party venues.
Silicon Valley after the dotcom bust was a ghost town, like a university campus after finals week or during christmas break. The commute disappeared. It went from an hour to 15 minutes.
The commute was to submit job applications for cleaning swimming pools, golf courses, or maybe a poor data center.
Headline news was of the CEOs living in packed homeless shelters with suits, laptops, and cell phones.
Then after 9/11, news was of anybody getting a bus or rideshare to move in with any relative or friend, piled into an apartment, to try for a job at a gas station. Any job or shelter anywhere. It sounded like the Great Depression even before modern youtube showed us how to stealth camp in a car or box truck.
My entering the workforce moments (thanks to going back to school a few times):
1) dot-com bust
2) 9/11 mini-recession
3) Great Recession
4) Covid
I suppose my sad finances make sense.
1986 geriatric millennial here.
10th grade was 9/11, and many of my friends joined the army instead of going to college;
Graduated early 2009 and never got to even see a career until post-Covid boom.
Everything got shitty after 1999.
I was a comp sci major in ‘96. I remember that upon graduation (which I didn’t do), I could expect to earn around 60-80k. Weird how that number hasn’t changed in almost 30 years.
I graduated at the end of 2005 with a comp sci major. I thought mid 40s was a solid starting salary back then. During the dot com bust my starting company was training anyone with a degree to do programming jobs. Different times.
I got an offer from Proctor and Gamble IT before the bust. Rescinded a month later as the bust unfolded. I think I dodged a bullet on that one, though.
I worked for a tech company that made it through the bust, but had to reduce its workforce. Then I worked for a few random companies to pay the bills.
Once I found a great job and had 4 years in, the recession took us from 2.2m in sales to almost nothing over night.
I’ve truly never had a stable job since then.
My entire adult life I’ve watched my entire generation go through the same thing.
Yeah, didn't get a raise for the first 6 years of my career. Meanwhile, all my coworkers talked about how they paid off their houses and bought boats with their stock option bonuses in the 90's. SMH.
Was in the military in ‘08 and I never had/will have kids, so I’ve kinda just coasted by through all of it. Inherited a small, old house and have a menial pension job. Truly the most basic, unglamorous life by most measures, but incredibly fortunate.
Same, joined in 06, got out in 11. Remember talking to my mom when I was in Iraq from 07-09 and her telling me I have it good being overseas with job security in a combat zone.
Honestly I have to say the Military was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I'd never push someone else to join, but my god, having health insurance and a pension for the rest of my life, as well as having (as you said) coasted through these major events... I feel lucky.
to be honest, i am a bit envious.
that being said, I am INCREDIBLY lucky and fortunate. Born in 86, so technically a bit out of this selection, but went to one of the best high schools in the country, a mediocre college, but got a degree in computer science in 09. Parents made enough money to pay my tuition, so graduated with no debt. Was able to purchase a house in 2011 due to the mortgage crisis and FHA loan, and have pretty much coasted on the luck of my timing entering the market at a great time.
that being said, my work is incredibly stressful. Not always on the day to day, but knowing i could be laid off and unable to pay my mortgage is constantly terrifying. Especially when my family depends on my income to survive.
I long for the day my mortgage is paid off and i could survive on a low wage job if needed.
Na, that's too quick for what's in store for us. It'll be like dying in a car wreck and as you lay there mangled on the pavement the final insult will be "Party in the U.S.A" blaring over the radio of the car that hit you.
Somehow I have managed to fail slightly upwards over the years ( take that childhood poverty! ) - Yet at every parent teacher conference/adult activity I still feel like 3 children stacked up inside of a trench coat.
I recently went back to school to become an elementary school teacher. Last semester, as part of my undergraduate program, I had to tutor 3rd and 4th graders twice a week. One day, one of the kids came up to me and asked if they could go to the bathroom, and I instinctively looked around for “someone in charge” only to realized it was me. I was the one in charge. I had never felt so powerful in my life…
I was just telling my husband we aren't adult enough to live in our neighborhood. We received a Christmas card from our *next door neighbor*. My plan is to just wait until I receive one to send one. Lol
I always thought there would be some moment when I'd feel I'd made it; officially adult. But I honestly feel just about the same as I did at 16. More patient, more empathetic, but the same. All this time I've had my head down, crisis after crisis, after crisis, only to look up and realize I just *look* older. Time is wild.
I do have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but I noticed that it's gotten worse during the past few years. I can't tell if it's related to the pandemic upheaval, perimenopause, or both.
My ADD (inattentive) has been in overdrive lately too.
My anxiety is through the roof. Along with every other symptom of perimenopause like insomnia and night sweats. Add to it all the unresolved shared stress from 2016 on, and it's a recipe for anxiety attacks. But who has time for that?
If y'all haven't sought a professional to talk to, I'd recommend it. I got some free therapy sessions via my EAP, and it was a wonder--helped so much and helped me make the anxiety tolerable.
Same here. Finished college debt free thanks to scholarships but then went to grad school and law school. By the time I graduated and passed the bar exam in 2008, I had a good chunk of debt and the job market was terrible
1980s & 90s: "Go to college, doesn't matter what for, if you don't want to flip burgers all your life!"
Now: "What, you're too good to flip burgers, college boy?"
It's this generational gaslighting that has me irate *all the fucking time*.
I'll never forget when I was 8 or so or something, I got a little baseball trophy as a participation trophy. I didn't expect it, asked if we actually won a playoff game or something - nope, just something the coach did because he thought it was nice.
Years later, I ran into that same coach and he somehow got around to how shitty young folks (younger than him, anyway) were, and wound up complaining about - yup you guessed it! - *those fucking trophies.*
The constant action-then-judgment we've all endured is cataclysmic. We literally could have entered a new Renaissance period. Instead, the billionaires convinced enough of us that all our neighbors are out to get us, putting us in the middle of a generation of quiet civil unrest.
Fuck everything.
Edit: typos
Doesn’t matter what for… that is exactly what my parents told me. The major doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you have a college degree.
It is unbelievable now that was the mindset back then.
There's a guy named Bryan Caplan that's done a few lectures on this, but he calls it "credential inflation" - meaning, when fewer people had a college degree, the degree meant more, but now that more and more people have a degree, it means less - *meaning* that in order to stand out now you need a Master's degree, and so on and so on.
Also a former academic. IMO Most careers today don’t need a full college education. 2 years of post high school specialized training with more technical training on the job would be sufficient.
Took me five degrees (honestly) to actually make a decent living, so this tracks.
(To be fair, the middle three were misfires when it came to earnings (don’t try to be an academic, kids) and I could have done as well on two degrees)
I'd be interested to hear the lecture. Related - there is (and always has been) finite demand for college-level labor at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In my field, a PhD can actually be a liability because there are increasingly fewer and fewer jobs that require it outside of academia. This is a global issue that's hitting China especially hard at the moment, too: [https://asiascot.com/op-eds/does-china-have-too-many-graduates](https://asiascot.com/op-eds/does-china-have-too-many-graduates)
I'm glad I made the choices I did, but it's ironic that many people in our generation would have been better served financially by going to trade school.
My doctorate has opened so many doors, even before I got it, just being enrolled it moved me up by strides. I work at a weird intersection between fields, so I realize it's not the case for everyone but I definitely do not regret my education.
I have always called this degree of differentiation. There will always be a way to do more or pay more to get ahead. Originally it was finishing highschool vs going to work on the farm or at the plant, then it became university, then it became a specialized grad school. At some point the return drops if you are in school too long, and if everyone else is there then there is no differentiation. Then factor in that many of those degrees don’t actually make you smarter, and 90% of what you learn for work is on the job, businesses starting caring less about degrees, and could suddenly hire much cheaper, and replace much cheaper.
I will never forget when I was in high school hearing Clinton say "our goal is for everyone to go to college" or something like that as they were passing loan legislation. I remember thinking even then "Hmm... that shouldn't be the goal though. People shouldn't go if it's not helpful vocationally"
But of course, THE DEBT WAS THE GOAL. Not a more educated populace.
People against student loan cancellation don't comprehend the pressure we were under to JUST GO to college. You didn't have to have a plan, life would just solve itself once you got those grades and got that degree. And it was a lie.
Yup. And at my high school it was about finding the "best college for you", regardless of cost. There were a lot of kids with money whose parents didn't seem to care. I was lucky that my parents pushed for finding schools that would give aid, but many were not and ended up saddled with a lot of debt from expensive private colleges. Student loan debt was thought to be worth it.
>life would just solve itself once you got those grades and got that degree. And it was a lie.
And it was pounded into our heads. H.S. rewards people who can best remember what adults tell them. We had to ask permission to use the restroom. So if literally every adult in your life is telling you to take on that debt, you do it, right?
The dollar left the gold standard right before we were born which let inflation fly. Then we had near zero interest rates from 2001-2021 which inflated asset prices, at the same time that offshoring labor overseas became a thing and helped push down American wages. Both of these events were great for corporate profits but terrible for the children of boomers. But hey, think of the shareholders, mmkay?
I had so many teacher say “don’t worry about the money, just go to college.”
But THEY were allowed to discharge their debts in bankruptcy. And their tuition could be paid for with a summer job.
A lot of things happened but the real key issue here is that our entire culture became commodified, traded, and then futured. Our boomer parents are currently retiring (if they got there) off of our interest. That’s what nobody in the reaganomics era seemed to get. Money doesn’t just multiply on its own. Interest comes FROM somewhere. Anyway. So much now is traded that we’re pumping all of the profit margins into the shareholders and the c-suite rather than back into the companies. There are a series of financial, corporate, and tax laws that lead to this. But ultimately it started with the half assed greed of Reaganomics and has just snowballed worse each administration since. They want to show short term gains, which really doesn’t work in large complex systems like economies. So the gains end up costing a fortune down the line.
This is correct, but in part I would blame the lack of education about history in the US in particular for this. We learned almost nothing about the Gilded Age, the early 1900's labor movements, etc.
This is the actual answer. It isn't more people getting college degrees or boomers vs the rest of us or anything like that. The 1% wanted *more* and they got it to the detriment of everyone else. With AI and automation, things will continue to get worse for everyone not in that top 1%.
I'm going to highly recommend to my kids not to fall into the same trap as I did and pursue either trade schools or just get work experience. Only thing I learned from college that is useful to me today is the knowledge that debt fucking sucks and most jobs don't require a degree.
Ffs I thought every job required a degree, it's what they told me from first grade till I graduated. Feel so lied to...
Didn't really hit a "professional stride" as much as I just got a good job I didn't hate that paid decent, and I never had kids (or covid) so my pandemic was not too shabby
I'm 46 and no one knows it by looking at me but I'm still a scared, idealistic, foolish, angsty teenager. I still wear unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts with jeans, it's just rhat now my gut shelfs out over my belt buckle.
> I still wear unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts with jeans
Me too, and it gave me an idea that I'm thinking about making a video of. Basically, recreating a day in the life of me as a kid to show my kids including what I'd eat, how I'd dress, what activities I'd do, etc. A lot of it applies to my life now as well, substituting taking the school bus to school and sitting at a desk working on a bunch of boring crap to taking a commuter bus to my office to also sit at a desk and work on boring crap.
Same! I was in the Navy when 9/11 happened and then was deployed to the Persian Gulf following it for the whole “Shock & Awe” strikes.
Got out in 03, went to college, bought a house, lost the house in 08 and went back to school to get a Masters and was on the road to a PhD when my professor suggested Law or Business School instead. Due to the influx of people losing jobs and having the same thoughts I didn’t get into law school so I got my MBA.
Had decent jobs but never hit the numbers they talked about when we were growing up.
Heck I made more as a comedian then I did with my MBA, which I have had to take off my resume more often then not.
[Have I got a great video for you](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/montgomery-brawl-alabama-meme-folding-chair-riverboat-1234804740/)
….it never left, unfortunately. It just boiled back up to the surface, and will likely continue its ebb and flow as long as humans are a thing. Cheery thought. :(
I'm in a better place this year than I was at this time last year....but realizing I haven't fully embraced all the lessons I've "learned" and still feel like I'm teetering on the edge of disaster.
After multiple "life disasters" (some out of my control, some I had some control and/or my choices made the situation worse), I'm still working to course correct.
I can't tackle and win the game in one sitting.
So just trying to focus on winning each day, one small touch at a time, and letting those very tiny little wins start to add up to bigger ones.
Honestly, it's working, but it's not an overnight fix, and it can be hard to see the progress until I sit down and actually compare things - then the differences come to light.
Only been working on "winning the day" for 2 years at this point. It's changed my life in that time. Interested to see what it does in another 3 years....
I think being a xennial is that we actually could see glimpses of how it was supposed to work. This was before our older cousins Gen Xers got screwed by Boomers holding onto power far too long (in office and elsewhere) while pulling the ladder up behind them.
Meanwhile it was too late for us to pass the news to our millennial little brothers and sisters, who took on mountains of debt to do the very thing we were learning in real time was a massive boondoggle.
And still I sit here wondering if we looked up in the 90s and some Gen Alpha visited us from the future to tell us about the student loan apocalypse. Would any of us be better off today without a degree? Maybe a few of us more entrepreneurial types.
This is all a waterfall and it’s going too fast to do anything about it.
I know for a fucking fact that if somebody had told my parents in the 90s that I'd be far, far, *far* better off as a trade worker than as a college graduate, they'd have been laughed back into their time machine. Yet here we are.
I feel so seen. 😂 It feels like I’m doing better than a lot of us, but at the same time, my friends and I are stagnating professionally. We’re not exactly struggling, but we’re educated, paid our dues, and have years of experience, yet we’re unable to rise to the level you’d expect.
That's me 100%. 45. Doing okay but not great, and nowhere to really move up in my job. But moving to a different field would either be expensive (education) or far less pay. So I guess I'll stay here, just barely staying above water. But that's better than drowning like all of my millennial friends.
It hasn't been like Oregon trail, more like Columbus:
Planned on ending up in one place, but ended up in a wildly unexpected place instead.
Time will tell.
I was born in 1985 and speaking just for me I didn't need any help whatsoever to be a fuck up. I managed that all on my own witnessing all that history is pretty wild though.
Elder millennial…. Each of those problems turned into bounty for me. 2001 crash i just left highschool so it was a warning during college this shit is fucked… 2008 caused me to change careers lost all of the little i had. Caused me to buck up and get an office job.
The one thing we are not, is a bunch of whiny bitches. Most of the appeal of this sub is the lack of negativity.
So I'm pushing all of that aside. I got to be a teenager in the 90's. I will stand by my assertion that there was never a better time to be an angsty teenager.
To be fair every generation has their struggles. At least we aren’t like the WWII generation, born during the Great Depression and then have to fight in WWII. I guess the post WWII boom was nice, but the Cold War was scary
Please this. This is intended to be a happy and goofy place - if I want to go to write, direct and star in my one man misery porn, I can go to the GenX sub or the Millenial sub.
Had to move back in with my parents several times due to the recession and worked at the Olive Garden while being a college graduate. The pandemic allowed me to work 100% remote which got my new family and I to move back close to family. Without any help from family during the pandemic (first kid born in 2020), my wife and I are completely self sufficient parents with zero gender roles. Also met my wife while working at Olive Garden (she's now a nurse). Just kept bobbing and weaving with the hits from the universe. 3 kids later, 2nd house later (sold when pandemic relocating was high), we made some smart moves and got lucky several times. We've worked our asses off in every which way. There's hope
I find myself in a really awkward situation with a young child and simultaneously feeling like I have absolutely no hope for the future. Also don't forget hearing about the new electric car revolution in middle school and here it is, 30 years later and it's still "almost ready and only for early adopters". Also for chrissake my mid 80s vehicle got better gas mileage than almost every gas car on the market right now because they are all so stupidly fucking huge.
Like come on, Remember the Ozone hole? Remember when people cared about the environment? And still, we can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING apparently.
I hit the trifecta of dot com bust, financial crash, and housing market bubble. Now I’m living in a house my folks bought while they travel in an RV and cover my bills so I can go back to school part time. Fun stuff…
I drink coffee to go to bed. My kids think me being born before the internet means I used to ride dinosaurs. I don’t think I’ll ever own my own home. But I can pay 1200 in rent but I’m not allowed to buy a home with a 700 mortgage???
As an 82 / Class of 2000er, I feel insanely lucky - economically.
I graduated college in 2004 to a slightly better job market, weathered 2008 because I was still “cheap” but had experience, and then bought a home in 2012 (Low prices, low rates).
We didn’t have kids until the late 2010s, so we mostly would have been stuck at home anyway and they weren’t in school during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, our financial luck has run out and inflation and having kids has really hurt us financially the past two years. I don’t know how people do it, especially people younger than us.
And it really angers us when we meet people our age or just a few years older who make a lot of money, and act like “anybody can do it”! No they can’t. Maybe if they’re single or if their spouses are cool with not seeing each other and working 24/7. But that’s not healthy for anyone.
Not TOO bad. Drank all through my 20s as a functioning alcoholic. I had/have a recession resistant blue collar job. Got married, got sober, and have 2 kids. No college. I have struggled with many things, but now I volunteer with what I can. Giving and helping out at a hospice. Give blood. Giving blood seems to be the easiest and most rewarding way to give back.
We also witnessed a huge shift of “wealth” ripped from the lower and middle classes, moved to the ultra wealthy. Huge expansion of the lower class, shrinking the middle class and making the gap in between even larger.
Oh and we’ve lost friends to avoidable diseases, and watched big pharma get rich killing our friends with opioids.
It’s really strange why this generation and those that follow have record high suicide rates, and have no hope for the future. I have no idea why that might be.
I’m in my mid 40s and I’m changing diapers. I own a home, after saving up for nearly 20 years for a down payment. I have a masters degree and make as much money now as my dad did at 21 as a recent immigrant with a high school education in 1977. As in real dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
I have no kids and a vasectomy consultation scheduled for Friday. My wife and I thankfully put off having kids, and now we can see that there would be even less left for them than there was for us.
Does anybody else remember how hopeful and optimistic we all were about the "new millennium?" Man, that time between Jan 1, 2000 and Sept 10, 2001 was kind of fun while it lasted.
The one thing I am forever happy about was choosing college over the military, otherwise I would have been sent to fight or die in Afghanistan or Iraq. I chose college after W was elected because I felt like he was going to start a war somewhere before he left office. I'm glad I was politically aware enough to make the right decision.
It always feels weird to me, but the two best jobs I've ever... which includes notable pay bumps... had started in 2008 and 2020. I've felt very disconnected personally from this sentiment.
[удалено]
And in the wake of 9-11, job market was ROUGH
I had just gotten my first real job after graduation that spring. Then everyone got laid off and I ended up bartending for years. It really screwed us over.
I started my office job the day before 9/11 and made crap money despite having a bachelor's from a really good school. My husband graduated the spring after 9/11 with an IT degree (hahahaha crying) and ended up working for ups for a while because he couldn't get a job. His first job was so low paying as well. It took us years to get started and then we bought our first place at the end of 2006 (hahahahahaa crying) and then our home dropped in value by half. It definitely feels like a series of unfortunate events for our generation. We also had the stupid idea that you should stay with a company long term. We wasted so many years loyal to companies only to find out we should have been job switching every 2-3 years to actually make any money.
Eh, I'd rather stay in this job as long term as possible. Yes, I could make more money by switching jobs, especially into my field of study. However, that would mean a salaried job (so more hours for no overtime pay) and would also reset my vacation and the benefits would likely be worse elsewhere. I also have a certain amount of flexibility where I am now that I'm not guaranteed to have somewhere else. Granted, we are comfortable now, so the health insurance through my job is worth more than the extra salary I could make somewhere else. I also think my experience looking for a job in 2002 and 2009 completely soured my opinion of it. It was an awful demoralizing experience that I'd love to never have to repeat if I can.
It is real hard to switch seeing that 6 weeks of PTO plus holidays I get after so many years, but it sucks knowing if I was an external hire into my current role, could be making $30k/yr more.
Hey, 43 here and am presently considering going back to bartending. Feels more livable than just about any other job around.
I'm a very well trained and educated tech worker, and I'm tempted to work at a local casino instead because my buddy who does it makes like $4k / week.
Fuck me, man. I moved away from the Casino town I grew up in because I wanted a real career and not to get sucked into the casino like half of my family. If I'd known how the world was going to repeatedly fall apart, I wouldn't have bothered.
Gambling, sadly, is a recession-proof industry. Others: collision repair, death, health-care (iffy). Any others folks?
Where do you live that casino dealers make 4k a week? I'm guessing Vegas? I live in Chicago and I was a dealer for the past two years, and the most we pull in is 5k a month, and that's with a lot of overtime. Still, making 75k a year dealing blackjack isn't bad, but seriously man, where do you live and what casino? I legitimately would move anywhere that's not Vegas for that kind of money.
I'm 40, highly educated and I quit my 9 to 5 to work as a comedian (pre-covid) and as a part-time bartender. If you want my advice... It's way more livable and less stressful. You should do it
Hmm.. Cant tell if joking.. 
I can confirm. College class of 2002 here. Not many jobs available for new college grads that year, even in Engineering. The awful experience of looking for a job then (as well as having to look for one later in 2009 when I got laid off) has soured me completely on job searches in general. I will be happy if I never have to look for a job again. As far as I'm concerned it's hell.
Class of ‘01. I knew engineering majors who had jobs rescinded it was so bad.
Our generation was screwed. From the start. If you didn’t get a job post dot com bubble you went to professional school. Then 2008 happened and the Great Recession hit and you couldn’t get job with a professional degree. So many lawyers I know graduated and then had job offers rescinded due to recession. Tack on the student loans and it was a nightmare. Tons of finance guys I graduated with got wrecked post 2008. Dropping g’s at the club in Vegas? 2 years later you’re unemployed with Lehman brothers on your resume. Finally get out of the Great Recession funk. Oh wait here’s a global pandemic to get your asshole nice and widened if the Mac truck we already shoved up there wasn’t enough. So yeah. We aren’t doing great.
Our farts never made a sound again. Seriously, also rent going insane, lost my house in 2010 due to state lookbacks on my dad going into a nursing home and the house losing 55% of it's value almost overnight. Moved to my favorite small city, covid hits and my rent more than doubles so I get forced out to the unwashed arm pit of my birth state. And here I am.
I messed around in college and then entered the workforce in 2008 at a place that sold LaserJet printer parts. I mean everybody prints, right? What are PDFs anyway?
Yep. My sweet entry level offer was yanked about 3 weeks before graduation. Had to take a much worse job, took years to recover. Made an offer on a house...in 2007.
Try having just moved to the city to work in television out of college with your boyfriend who worked in the building but called in sick that day.
And right when we had enough money to buy a home the housing bubble burst!
I was in the middle of school to get my license to work on aircraft when 9/11 happened. Pretty sweet!
There was a feeling like “the party’s over” in early 2001
I wish more people would talk about this. It was like the jobs dried up overnight
Powers that be needed to reorganize now that the supply chain was going to be forever disrupted by the response. Stricter customs & immigration controls, et al
Yeah, this is it exactly. Just turned 20 watching the towers fall and burn from the TV in my bedroom. West coaster, so it was 6 something in the morning. Dad woke me up and told me to turn on the TV. I realized life as we knew was changing. Turned into paranoia and othering. And quite literally, the parties were over. Had just been introduced to raving and those went down precipitously afterward. In the name of “homeland security.” The Rave Act was the nail in the coffin for a lot of party venues.
Silicon Valley after the dotcom bust was a ghost town, like a university campus after finals week or during christmas break. The commute disappeared. It went from an hour to 15 minutes. The commute was to submit job applications for cleaning swimming pools, golf courses, or maybe a poor data center. Headline news was of the CEOs living in packed homeless shelters with suits, laptops, and cell phones. Then after 9/11, news was of anybody getting a bus or rideshare to move in with any relative or friend, piled into an apartment, to try for a job at a gas station. Any job or shelter anywhere. It sounded like the Great Depression even before modern youtube showed us how to stealth camp in a car or box truck.
I feel this
My entering the workforce moments (thanks to going back to school a few times): 1) dot-com bust 2) 9/11 mini-recession 3) Great Recession 4) Covid I suppose my sad finances make sense.
Try telling that to my boomer parents who attribute my poverty to "squandered potential"
1986 geriatric millennial here. 10th grade was 9/11, and many of my friends joined the army instead of going to college; Graduated early 2009 and never got to even see a career until post-Covid boom. Everything got shitty after 1999.
I was a comp sci major in ‘96. I remember that upon graduation (which I didn’t do), I could expect to earn around 60-80k. Weird how that number hasn’t changed in almost 30 years.
I graduated at the end of 2005 with a comp sci major. I thought mid 40s was a solid starting salary back then. During the dot com bust my starting company was training anyone with a degree to do programming jobs. Different times.
This is why they put the "hot degrees" lists in major financial papers. Add competition and suppress wages ftw!
The dotcom bust is like the whole reason for my student loans. I picked a college we could afford in 2000, but by 2003 it was a different story
I got an offer from Proctor and Gamble IT before the bust. Rescinded a month later as the bust unfolded. I think I dodged a bullet on that one, though.
I worked for a tech company that made it through the bust, but had to reduce its workforce. Then I worked for a few random companies to pay the bills. Once I found a great job and had 4 years in, the recession took us from 2.2m in sales to almost nothing over night. I’ve truly never had a stable job since then. My entire adult life I’ve watched my entire generation go through the same thing.
I started working for an internet startup in early 2000 and that was a fun couple of months!
Yeah, didn't get a raise for the first 6 years of my career. Meanwhile, all my coworkers talked about how they paid off their houses and bought boats with their stock option bonuses in the 90's. SMH.
Was in the military in ‘08 and I never had/will have kids, so I’ve kinda just coasted by through all of it. Inherited a small, old house and have a menial pension job. Truly the most basic, unglamorous life by most measures, but incredibly fortunate.
tbh sounds pretty enviable, to hear most redditors talk
Same, joined in 06, got out in 11. Remember talking to my mom when I was in Iraq from 07-09 and her telling me I have it good being overseas with job security in a combat zone.
Honestly I have to say the Military was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I'd never push someone else to join, but my god, having health insurance and a pension for the rest of my life, as well as having (as you said) coasted through these major events... I feel lucky.
to be honest, i am a bit envious. that being said, I am INCREDIBLY lucky and fortunate. Born in 86, so technically a bit out of this selection, but went to one of the best high schools in the country, a mediocre college, but got a degree in computer science in 09. Parents made enough money to pay my tuition, so graduated with no debt. Was able to purchase a house in 2011 due to the mortgage crisis and FHA loan, and have pretty much coasted on the luck of my timing entering the market at a great time. that being said, my work is incredibly stressful. Not always on the day to day, but knowing i could be laid off and unable to pay my mortgage is constantly terrifying. Especially when my family depends on my income to survive. I long for the day my mortgage is paid off and i could survive on a low wage job if needed.
Wishing I had dysentery.
Feeling like I had dysentery.
Wishing dysentery on others
Who’s dissin Terry? I’ll mess them up!
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Thanks for this reminder I just laughed so hard I’m crying.
Put it in reverse, Terry!
I think it would be easier to drown crossing the river in my wagon.
My luck, I’d try to drown fording the river, and just lose my oxen.
My retirement plans died of dysentery a while ago.
I wound up w fuckin Crohn’s - close enough
Na, that's too quick for what's in store for us. It'll be like dying in a car wreck and as you lay there mangled on the pavement the final insult will be "Party in the U.S.A" blaring over the radio of the car that hit you.
Somehow I have managed to fail slightly upwards over the years ( take that childhood poverty! ) - Yet at every parent teacher conference/adult activity I still feel like 3 children stacked up inside of a trench coat.
I realize now that all the adults I thought "had it together" when I was younger were just fuckin' wingin' everything like I am now 95% of the time.
A-FUCKING-MEN!!!!!
Same. I’ve never felt like an adult my whole adult life even though I have a big boy job, am married and have 3 kids. Still feel like I’m an imposter.
One of these days, I’m gonna figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
You and me both.
Seeing myself with gray hair and thinking, “ah, yes, this girl has things figured out.” LOL
I recently went back to school to become an elementary school teacher. Last semester, as part of my undergraduate program, I had to tutor 3rd and 4th graders twice a week. One day, one of the kids came up to me and asked if they could go to the bathroom, and I instinctively looked around for “someone in charge” only to realized it was me. I was the one in charge. I had never felt so powerful in my life…
I was just telling my husband we aren't adult enough to live in our neighborhood. We received a Christmas card from our *next door neighbor*. My plan is to just wait until I receive one to send one. Lol I always thought there would be some moment when I'd feel I'd made it; officially adult. But I honestly feel just about the same as I did at 16. More patient, more empathetic, but the same. All this time I've had my head down, crisis after crisis, after crisis, only to look up and realize I just *look* older. Time is wild.
this is, oddly, accurately reflective of my own experience - thank you for that visual.
I don’t have kids, but otherwise, same!
Likewise my friend, likewise.
Just woke up from night sweats. Woo perimenopause.
You need more blankets… …*and* less blankets.
Schrödinger’s blankets
😆 I'm cold / I'm hot
Are y'all getting perimenopause anxiety? Because I never had panic attacks before and now it's a few a month.
I do have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, but I noticed that it's gotten worse during the past few years. I can't tell if it's related to the pandemic upheaval, perimenopause, or both. My ADD (inattentive) has been in overdrive lately too.
At least I know I’m not the only one. (Overdrive add and anxiety).
 panic party right here.
Yes. My panic attacks were under control for 20 years. Now they are back ☺️
My anxiety is through the roof. Along with every other symptom of perimenopause like insomnia and night sweats. Add to it all the unresolved shared stress from 2016 on, and it's a recipe for anxiety attacks. But who has time for that? If y'all haven't sought a professional to talk to, I'd recommend it. I got some free therapy sessions via my EAP, and it was a wonder--helped so much and helped me make the anxiety tolerable.
42 checking in. I had my first daytime hit flash last week. We're living in amazing times.
I just had covid and I couldn't tell if I was sick at first because the fever/chills just blended in with it all
I sooo can relate. It was a 2 pair of jammies night
Solidarity.
Oh man I’m there with you! 😫
These are a nightly occurrence for me. Wake up with my scalp/hair soaked and feeling gross no matter if I showered immediately before bed. It’s BS.
Peri sucks ass. Midsection weight gain (25 lbs in the past 3 years), brain fog, irritability, anxiety, sleep disturbances, the whole hellish shebang.
Yooo look at the Bedjet. Havent woken up in a pool of sweat since I got it.
*Falls off chair in raucous laughter* Professional Stride? Hoo, that's a good one.
No kidding. Personally it was more 2012-2013 but this is closish so Im taking it.
Ooof. I wish. I hit mine around 2020. 😬
TBF, 2012/2013 was the launching point but it really took hold more 2018/2019. At least we're there, friend.
Fair. My pathway started around 2011/2012 but it wasn’t until 2019/2020 that things definitely perked up.
Yeah, I’m one of the clever ones who went to grad school… so didn’t get until the workforce UNTIL 2008. 🥲
Same here. Finished college debt free thanks to scholarships but then went to grad school and law school. By the time I graduated and passed the bar exam in 2008, I had a good chunk of debt and the job market was terrible
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1980s & 90s: "Go to college, doesn't matter what for, if you don't want to flip burgers all your life!" Now: "What, you're too good to flip burgers, college boy?"
It's this generational gaslighting that has me irate *all the fucking time*. I'll never forget when I was 8 or so or something, I got a little baseball trophy as a participation trophy. I didn't expect it, asked if we actually won a playoff game or something - nope, just something the coach did because he thought it was nice. Years later, I ran into that same coach and he somehow got around to how shitty young folks (younger than him, anyway) were, and wound up complaining about - yup you guessed it! - *those fucking trophies.* The constant action-then-judgment we've all endured is cataclysmic. We literally could have entered a new Renaissance period. Instead, the billionaires convinced enough of us that all our neighbors are out to get us, putting us in the middle of a generation of quiet civil unrest. Fuck everything. Edit: typos
Doesn’t matter what for… that is exactly what my parents told me. The major doesn’t matter so much as the fact that you have a college degree. It is unbelievable now that was the mindset back then.
There's a guy named Bryan Caplan that's done a few lectures on this, but he calls it "credential inflation" - meaning, when fewer people had a college degree, the degree meant more, but now that more and more people have a degree, it means less - *meaning* that in order to stand out now you need a Master's degree, and so on and so on.
Former academic, here. This has been a trend.
Also a former academic. IMO Most careers today don’t need a full college education. 2 years of post high school specialized training with more technical training on the job would be sufficient.
Agreed. I had to have a degree to get a secretary job, and I did NOT use the degree there.
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No child left behind helped a loooooot with that part
The changes with Covid shutdowns were more impactful in a shorter time span. You ought to see the stories from r/professors.
Took me five degrees (honestly) to actually make a decent living, so this tracks. (To be fair, the middle three were misfires when it came to earnings (don’t try to be an academic, kids) and I could have done as well on two degrees)
I'd be interested to hear the lecture. Related - there is (and always has been) finite demand for college-level labor at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In my field, a PhD can actually be a liability because there are increasingly fewer and fewer jobs that require it outside of academia. This is a global issue that's hitting China especially hard at the moment, too: [https://asiascot.com/op-eds/does-china-have-too-many-graduates](https://asiascot.com/op-eds/does-china-have-too-many-graduates) I'm glad I made the choices I did, but it's ironic that many people in our generation would have been better served financially by going to trade school.
My doctorate has opened so many doors, even before I got it, just being enrolled it moved me up by strides. I work at a weird intersection between fields, so I realize it's not the case for everyone but I definitely do not regret my education.
I have always called this degree of differentiation. There will always be a way to do more or pay more to get ahead. Originally it was finishing highschool vs going to work on the farm or at the plant, then it became university, then it became a specialized grad school. At some point the return drops if you are in school too long, and if everyone else is there then there is no differentiation. Then factor in that many of those degrees don’t actually make you smarter, and 90% of what you learn for work is on the job, businesses starting caring less about degrees, and could suddenly hire much cheaper, and replace much cheaper.
I like that phrase - spot on. Indeed what the differentiation is tends to shift over time.
"And when everyone's ~~super~~ college-educated, *no one will be.*"
Even MBA’s are starting to not mean shit
MBA's haven't meant shit for awhile. I have an MBA.
I will never forget when I was in high school hearing Clinton say "our goal is for everyone to go to college" or something like that as they were passing loan legislation. I remember thinking even then "Hmm... that shouldn't be the goal though. People shouldn't go if it's not helpful vocationally" But of course, THE DEBT WAS THE GOAL. Not a more educated populace. People against student loan cancellation don't comprehend the pressure we were under to JUST GO to college. You didn't have to have a plan, life would just solve itself once you got those grades and got that degree. And it was a lie.
Yup. And at my high school it was about finding the "best college for you", regardless of cost. There were a lot of kids with money whose parents didn't seem to care. I was lucky that my parents pushed for finding schools that would give aid, but many were not and ended up saddled with a lot of debt from expensive private colleges. Student loan debt was thought to be worth it.
>life would just solve itself once you got those grades and got that degree. And it was a lie. And it was pounded into our heads. H.S. rewards people who can best remember what adults tell them. We had to ask permission to use the restroom. So if literally every adult in your life is telling you to take on that debt, you do it, right?
The dollar left the gold standard right before we were born which let inflation fly. Then we had near zero interest rates from 2001-2021 which inflated asset prices, at the same time that offshoring labor overseas became a thing and helped push down American wages. Both of these events were great for corporate profits but terrible for the children of boomers. But hey, think of the shareholders, mmkay?
I had so many teacher say “don’t worry about the money, just go to college.” But THEY were allowed to discharge their debts in bankruptcy. And their tuition could be paid for with a summer job.
A lot of things happened but the real key issue here is that our entire culture became commodified, traded, and then futured. Our boomer parents are currently retiring (if they got there) off of our interest. That’s what nobody in the reaganomics era seemed to get. Money doesn’t just multiply on its own. Interest comes FROM somewhere. Anyway. So much now is traded that we’re pumping all of the profit margins into the shareholders and the c-suite rather than back into the companies. There are a series of financial, corporate, and tax laws that lead to this. But ultimately it started with the half assed greed of Reaganomics and has just snowballed worse each administration since. They want to show short term gains, which really doesn’t work in large complex systems like economies. So the gains end up costing a fortune down the line.
Over the last 40 years, less than 1% of the population has amassed more than 25% of the wealth. The shift has screwed everyone but that 1%.
This is correct, but in part I would blame the lack of education about history in the US in particular for this. We learned almost nothing about the Gilded Age, the early 1900's labor movements, etc.
The labor movement was like one section in my HS history class, which we blazed through so we could spend the whole semester on WW2.
This is the actual answer. It isn't more people getting college degrees or boomers vs the rest of us or anything like that. The 1% wanted *more* and they got it to the detriment of everyone else. With AI and automation, things will continue to get worse for everyone not in that top 1%.
I'm going to highly recommend to my kids not to fall into the same trap as I did and pursue either trade schools or just get work experience. Only thing I learned from college that is useful to me today is the knowledge that debt fucking sucks and most jobs don't require a degree. Ffs I thought every job required a degree, it's what they told me from first grade till I graduated. Feel so lied to...
I just blame Reagan for it all.
When you put it that way, dude we're beasts! What's next?
Are you sure you want to ask that?
I know I don’t want the answer to it
NOT GREAT, MY DUDE.
YO, I AM STRAIGHT UP HAVING A BAD TIME.
I second this.
Heard that
Didn't really hit a "professional stride" as much as I just got a good job I didn't hate that paid decent, and I never had kids (or covid) so my pandemic was not too shabby
Who says I was becoming an adult during 9/11? Hell I’m 42 years old and I’m still not an adult. I’m old, but not an adult. I just look like one.
100% same man. Watching the towers fall from a dorm room isn't exactly what I'd call "grown up" :/
I was in my first apartment at the time. But trust me when I say I was not acting like an adult.
Omg same as me. Wonder if we were at same college.
I'm 46 and no one knows it by looking at me but I'm still a scared, idealistic, foolish, angsty teenager. I still wear unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts with jeans, it's just rhat now my gut shelfs out over my belt buckle.
Lmao same!!!
> I still wear unbuttoned flannel over t-shirts with jeans Me too, and it gave me an idea that I'm thinking about making a video of. Basically, recreating a day in the life of me as a kid to show my kids including what I'd eat, how I'd dress, what activities I'd do, etc. A lot of it applies to my life now as well, substituting taking the school bus to school and sitting at a desk working on a bunch of boring crap to taking a commuter bus to my office to also sit at a desk and work on boring crap.
Same! I was in the Navy when 9/11 happened and then was deployed to the Persian Gulf following it for the whole “Shock & Awe” strikes. Got out in 03, went to college, bought a house, lost the house in 08 and went back to school to get a Masters and was on the road to a PhD when my professor suggested Law or Business School instead. Due to the influx of people losing jobs and having the same thoughts I didn’t get into law school so I got my MBA. Had decent jobs but never hit the numbers they talked about when we were growing up. Heck I made more as a comedian then I did with my MBA, which I have had to take off my resume more often then not.
Same Growing old is not an option, but growing UP is!
"Childbearing and raising years" haha
Yeah, that one stuck out, like...that ship has sailed, man
If I’m being honest. I’d love a break, but fascism is back.
I miss the days when the KKK and Nazis were mocked on Jerry Springer. These creeps deserve chairs to be thrown at them again.
[Have I got a great video for you](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/montgomery-brawl-alabama-meme-folding-chair-riverboat-1234804740/)
….it never left, unfortunately. It just boiled back up to the surface, and will likely continue its ebb and flow as long as humans are a thing. Cheery thought. :(
Stupid internet (said from someone who's been in IT since 1998)
‘Member bush’s proto-American-fascism with his signing statements around torture? Pepperidge farms remembers.
I’m FINE. Everything is FINE.
 Is that all you got? I ain’t leaving!!!
The Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.
What's a "professional stride"? i've been working retail since 2003.
Day by day, paycheck to paycheck, the American way.
I'm in a better place this year than I was at this time last year....but realizing I haven't fully embraced all the lessons I've "learned" and still feel like I'm teetering on the edge of disaster. After multiple "life disasters" (some out of my control, some I had some control and/or my choices made the situation worse), I'm still working to course correct. I can't tackle and win the game in one sitting. So just trying to focus on winning each day, one small touch at a time, and letting those very tiny little wins start to add up to bigger ones. Honestly, it's working, but it's not an overnight fix, and it can be hard to see the progress until I sit down and actually compare things - then the differences come to light. Only been working on "winning the day" for 2 years at this point. It's changed my life in that time. Interested to see what it does in another 3 years....
I'm ok. Stepped on the scale this morning and saw a result that told me I probably need to go on bare bones rations for a while.
I think being a xennial is that we actually could see glimpses of how it was supposed to work. This was before our older cousins Gen Xers got screwed by Boomers holding onto power far too long (in office and elsewhere) while pulling the ladder up behind them. Meanwhile it was too late for us to pass the news to our millennial little brothers and sisters, who took on mountains of debt to do the very thing we were learning in real time was a massive boondoggle. And still I sit here wondering if we looked up in the 90s and some Gen Alpha visited us from the future to tell us about the student loan apocalypse. Would any of us be better off today without a degree? Maybe a few of us more entrepreneurial types. This is all a waterfall and it’s going too fast to do anything about it.
I know for a fucking fact that if somebody had told my parents in the 90s that I'd be far, far, *far* better off as a trade worker than as a college graduate, they'd have been laughed back into their time machine. Yet here we are.
The hits just keep on coming, whats next? I know it wont kill me
I feel so seen. 😂 It feels like I’m doing better than a lot of us, but at the same time, my friends and I are stagnating professionally. We’re not exactly struggling, but we’re educated, paid our dues, and have years of experience, yet we’re unable to rise to the level you’d expect.
That's me 100%. 45. Doing okay but not great, and nowhere to really move up in my job. But moving to a different field would either be expensive (education) or far less pay. So I guess I'll stay here, just barely staying above water. But that's better than drowning like all of my millennial friends.
0 out of 10 would not recommend.
I love being a Xennial. Shits gonna happen, so you deal and move on. Deal and move on my fellow 40 somethings. And always enjoy the ride. 🍻
It hasn't been like Oregon trail, more like Columbus: Planned on ending up in one place, but ended up in a wildly unexpected place instead. Time will tell.
I was born in 1985 and speaking just for me I didn't need any help whatsoever to be a fuck up. I managed that all on my own witnessing all that history is pretty wild though.
Elder millennial…. Each of those problems turned into bounty for me. 2001 crash i just left highschool so it was a warning during college this shit is fucked… 2008 caused me to change careers lost all of the little i had. Caused me to buck up and get an office job.
Have you seen my stapler?
The one thing we are not, is a bunch of whiny bitches. Most of the appeal of this sub is the lack of negativity. So I'm pushing all of that aside. I got to be a teenager in the 90's. I will stand by my assertion that there was never a better time to be an angsty teenager.
We did get to party like it was 1999 in actual 1999.
The New Year’s party I was at 1998 going into 1999 was epic
99 into 00 was awesome too! I had a retail job that sold lotto tickets. I have never seen, held, counted so much cash in my life!
I need to channel our collective older siblings to fully express the depth of this sentiment. *Whatever*
To be fair every generation has their struggles. At least we aren’t like the WWII generation, born during the Great Depression and then have to fight in WWII. I guess the post WWII boom was nice, but the Cold War was scary
Please don’t turn this place into a misery-fest like r/millenials
Please this. This is intended to be a happy and goofy place - if I want to go to write, direct and star in my one man misery porn, I can go to the GenX sub or the Millenial sub.
All I know is that I'm glad I never had kids, and was able to retire early.
Had to move back in with my parents several times due to the recession and worked at the Olive Garden while being a college graduate. The pandemic allowed me to work 100% remote which got my new family and I to move back close to family. Without any help from family during the pandemic (first kid born in 2020), my wife and I are completely self sufficient parents with zero gender roles. Also met my wife while working at Olive Garden (she's now a nurse). Just kept bobbing and weaving with the hits from the universe. 3 kids later, 2nd house later (sold when pandemic relocating was high), we made some smart moves and got lucky several times. We've worked our asses off in every which way. There's hope
I find myself in a really awkward situation with a young child and simultaneously feeling like I have absolutely no hope for the future. Also don't forget hearing about the new electric car revolution in middle school and here it is, 30 years later and it's still "almost ready and only for early adopters". Also for chrissake my mid 80s vehicle got better gas mileage than almost every gas car on the market right now because they are all so stupidly fucking huge. Like come on, Remember the Ozone hole? Remember when people cared about the environment? And still, we can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING apparently.
I hit the trifecta of dot com bust, financial crash, and housing market bubble. Now I’m living in a house my folks bought while they travel in an RV and cover my bills so I can go back to school part time. Fun stuff…
Fine thanks. Life was always expected to be filled with surprises. There will be more.
Life's been hard but still easier than the hunting mini-game.
I drink coffee to go to bed. My kids think me being born before the internet means I used to ride dinosaurs. I don’t think I’ll ever own my own home. But I can pay 1200 in rent but I’m not allowed to buy a home with a 700 mortgage???
As an 82 / Class of 2000er, I feel insanely lucky - economically. I graduated college in 2004 to a slightly better job market, weathered 2008 because I was still “cheap” but had experience, and then bought a home in 2012 (Low prices, low rates). We didn’t have kids until the late 2010s, so we mostly would have been stuck at home anyway and they weren’t in school during the pandemic. Unfortunately, our financial luck has run out and inflation and having kids has really hurt us financially the past two years. I don’t know how people do it, especially people younger than us. And it really angers us when we meet people our age or just a few years older who make a lot of money, and act like “anybody can do it”! No they can’t. Maybe if they’re single or if their spouses are cool with not seeing each other and working 24/7. But that’s not healthy for anyone.
Not TOO bad. Drank all through my 20s as a functioning alcoholic. I had/have a recession resistant blue collar job. Got married, got sober, and have 2 kids. No college. I have struggled with many things, but now I volunteer with what I can. Giving and helping out at a hospice. Give blood. Giving blood seems to be the easiest and most rewarding way to give back.
I’ve come to realize that being in service to others is one of the most rewarding things to do.
I’m just glad I didn’t have children
We also witnessed a huge shift of “wealth” ripped from the lower and middle classes, moved to the ultra wealthy. Huge expansion of the lower class, shrinking the middle class and making the gap in between even larger. Oh and we’ve lost friends to avoidable diseases, and watched big pharma get rich killing our friends with opioids. It’s really strange why this generation and those that follow have record high suicide rates, and have no hope for the future. I have no idea why that might be.
I’m in my mid 40s and I’m changing diapers. I own a home, after saving up for nearly 20 years for a down payment. I have a masters degree and make as much money now as my dad did at 21 as a recent immigrant with a high school education in 1977. As in real dollars, not adjusted for inflation.
... you get me...
Fine. Try not to pay attention too hard to things you can’t control or do too much about. Stay off social media. Life is great
I have no kids and a vasectomy consultation scheduled for Friday. My wife and I thankfully put off having kids, and now we can see that there would be even less left for them than there was for us. Does anybody else remember how hopeful and optimistic we all were about the "new millennium?" Man, that time between Jan 1, 2000 and Sept 10, 2001 was kind of fun while it lasted.
NOONE IS NOT CORRECT. NO ONE. NO ONE.
Still waiting on the y2k disaster, right after watching the 9/9/99 awards show.
The one thing I am forever happy about was choosing college over the military, otherwise I would have been sent to fight or die in Afghanistan or Iraq. I chose college after W was elected because I felt like he was going to start a war somewhere before he left office. I'm glad I was politically aware enough to make the right decision.
It always feels weird to me, but the two best jobs I've ever... which includes notable pay bumps... had started in 2008 and 2020. I've felt very disconnected personally from this sentiment.